What is cPanel administration automation and why it matters to me?

cPanel and WHM 11 is the premier choice for web hosting administration automation. With tools to keep servers secure, provision customer accounts, transfer accounts from server to server, deploy applications (blogs, cms, etc), and much much more, your web hosting operation will jump to light speed with cPanel and WHM 11.

cPanel is a Web-based Web hosting control panel provided by a company of the same name, originally formed in 1997. The control panel was designed to make administration of Web sites simple. cPanel manipulates all aspects of Web site administration in its interface. It was originally designed as the control panel for Speed Hosting because the original author of cPanel, J. Nick Koston, had a stake in the now inactive Web hosting company. Today cPanel is a leading Web Hosting Control Panel Software provider. The company supplies hosting automation tools to data centers and customers all over the world.

cPanel products are designed for use by commercial Web hosting services. They are used by thousands of servers worldwide to equip administrators with the tools needed to provide superior hosting to their customers. The software is proprietary and distributed by cPanel, Inc. Many dedicated-server companies install it along with the operating system, earning them reduced rates of purchase.

cPanel is currently available as a package with WHM as version 11.X. cPanel and WebHost Manager together form a fully featured Web hosting control panel system, providing an interface for both customers and staff of the domain owner. To the client, cPanel provides front-ends for a number of common operations, including the management of PGP keys, crontab tasks, mail and FTP accounts, and mailing lists. cPanel manages some software packages separately from the underlying operating system, applying upgrades to Apache, PHP, MySQL, and related software packages automatically. This ensures that these packages remain compatible with cPanel.

Within cPanel, a domain owner has all the tools needed to create an impressive Web presence. Users can add mail accounts, access files, use Web site builders, add blogs to the site, and more. In addition, every person who has a mail account on a cPanel domain has access to webmail, spam filtering, message filter, and many more settings to ensure a great mail experience. Several add-ons exist for an additional fee, the most notable being Fantastico, a bundle of scripts which automate the installation of Web applications such as SMF, phpBB, Drupal, Joomla, TikiWiki, Moodle and over 50 others.

cPanel runs on a number of popular RPM-based Linux distributions, such as SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as FreeBSD. The company has plans to release its first Microsoft Windows Server product line in beta late in 2008. The general requirements for installation include a processor of 266 MHz or better, 256MB of RAM, 10GB-2TB disk space, and a fresh install of the distribution.

Recommended web hosts providers that are using cPanel:

• HostGator read their Review

• BlueHost read their Review

• HostMonster read their Review

Below is a snap shot of the cPanel at HostGator most of these will be set up this way, some small differences in the theme or the order of icons may be noted with the different web hosting providers.